Moral principles drive faith leaders to speak out against Trump on immigration, foreign policy

The Rachel Maddow Show

Rachel Maddow, MS NOW

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4.4 • 35.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rachel Maddow shares recent examples of prominent members of the clergy speaking out against Donald Trump's abuse anti-immigrant tactics and his belligerent foreign policy, and talks with Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, about defending immigrant members of his community and Donald Trump's dismantling of the moral role the U.S. plays in the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Really happy to have you here.
0:01.3	So he grew up in New Hampshire.
0:03.8	He was born and raised in Keene, New Hampshire.
0:06.3	He then left New Hampshire to go to military school.
0:09.0	He went to VMI to the Virginia Military Institute.
0:11.4	He was actually valedictorian of his class at VMI.
0:15.8	He then went on to Harvard.
0:17.3	He was going to be an English literature major at Harvard.
0:20.6	But he soon changed his mind.
0:24.6	He felt a calling.
0:26.3	He was called to the priesthood.
0:29.1	And so he left Harvard.
0:30.4	He enrolled in the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
0:35.2	And it is while he was enrolled at seminary, he was still a seminarian,
0:39.5	that he got permission from the seminary to complete some of his classwork remotely,
0:45.1	not in Massachusetts, but in Alabama. It was 1965, the roiling summer of 1965,
0:54.0	and he went to Louns County, Alabama, right in the Alabama Black Belt.
0:59.0	He went there to serve the poor.
1:02.0	He tutored kids.
1:04.0	He tried to get people hooked up with programs that could help them financially.
1:08.0	He helped integrate a whites-only Episcopal Church in Lowndes County, Alabama.
1:14.5	He registered people to vote there. Specifically, he registered African Americans to vote in Louns County.
	...

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